The Royal and The Scoundrel
by StripedCaramelCandies
Summary: Madison didnt intend to meet the captain of the royal army. She never expected him to be so damn handsome, either. Her ice heart cant break or be opened.Now, she's used to being alone, and she thinks she needs herself only. Ben thinks otherwise.


** AN: Hey guys! Okay, believe it or not this is my first fanfiction... like _ever._ Wait! Don't go! I know i not the best writer on fanfiction, but to the blind i might be decent :/ Thank you for opening up this page, it means a lot to me. It would mean even more if you reviewed it, so it could get super-duper amazing ^_^ But anyways, the reason i wanted to write this fanfic is because of Fable III's certain Captain Benjamin Finn... DANG hes smexy :3 and of course i was a little upset that he was not a romance option -.- ah well. Well, i dug a bit deeper and started looking at PrincessXBen fanfics, and i was literally drooling over the coputer screen they were so freakishly good. So i was a bit fired up :) Please R&R, (Please, if my story offends you _that_ much, tell me what i could do to fix it in a poilte manner thankies!) Enjoy or don't, its your life :)**

**Note: Fable III and its original characters are in no way my own, i do not own Fable III. But, Madison is all mine ladies and gents ^.^**

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><p>The Royal and The Scoundrel.<p>

Chapter 1

"Spare me! Please! I'll do whateva' ya wan', I swear!" The defenseless mercenary pleaded. The sword and gun were shot out of his grasp long ago, and several lifeless bodies lay around him, all either skeletons or bloody corpses. He looked up at the girl with begging eyes, hoping his life was not over just yet.

The rebel princess looked down on him, grey eyes flaming in fury. Mercy had taken a grip on her as she glanced around him, bodies in abundance, and on top of that, a _mercenary_ was actually pleading for his life. "Alright, "she gritted through her teeth," I will let you live-" The man shouted in rejoice and was as loud as one could possibly be, when suddenly he was smacked brutally across the face, crimson liquid pouring out of his nose in excessive amounts.

She pulled him by the collar toward her, now face to face and foreheads nearly touching, her new shock gauntlet slightly grazing his collar with electricity. His face turned into a terrified expression, fingers trembling immensely. She swore there was a tear in his left eye, but dismissed it promptly. "But, if you so near as touch your sword, and it's directed at an innocent, I will personally rip your throat out and feed it to my dog. Understand?" She spat, literally. She gestured to her dog, which had his teeth bared viciously, and they seemed as sharp as ever. He nodded and she released his shirt collar, and with a squeak he scampered off into the forest.

"Balls, Maddy," Walter said, eyes wide from what he had just heard. "I can't believe how ruthless and powerful you've become." he shook his head in disbelief. "Come on, Walter," Madison shrugged as if it was nothing. "You of all people should know I just cannot stand mercenaries and their attitudes. I hate when people just stroll in and think they have control over you." Although it was true, she silently cursed herself for not being more merciful to the buggers.

She cleaned her blade of cold blood as if it were nothing, but the sweet, kind, naive Madison threatened to sting tears for her actions. 'Shit, what have I become?' she thought. She used to be so kind hearted, sweet and innocent, and wouldn't even hurt a fly, a man no less. Since the incident with Logan, her brother and the King of Albion, in the throne room she turned her heart into a cold, never-melting block of ice and steel. 'Elliot…' she thought. Her heart cringed. She shook her head, swallowing the lump forming in her throat and continued walking to the Mistpeak Monorail Station accompanied by her large, aged and rather burly father-figure and her black and white border collie, Dustin.

"Maddy," Walter said in pessimistic tone, and she just knew that she was about to get an earful of criticisms. "If you really hated them, you wouldn't let them hurt you so easily. You did not block as efficiently as you could have, you got nasty scratches, you failed countering their attacks and when you did it was very poor," he harrumphed. She scoffed. Damn, she thought, when was this guy ever going to be satisfied?

"_Actually_, Walter, I was doing just spectacular before you rushed in and tried to be the Hero, which I think is _my_ job!" she pointed her thumb to herself and stomped her foot in protest. Walters face got red with anger, "Well, missy, if I hadn't stepped in, that mercenary with the nasty scar on his chin would've lopped off your head and it'd be rolling down that hill!" he gestured to the rather extensive hill behind them, that they were still climbing, in fact.

"Really?" She grimaced, "I would've loved to counter-attack, like I planned, but someone got in the way and I could have lopped your head off if I hadn't looked first!" She shouted and thrust her hands in the air, as if to emphasize her point. While she had her hands were up, however, she could see blood dripping from various places on her arms.

Walters face scrunched up with anger, and his tone went dark, brown eyes now pools of black. "Do _not_ be ungrateful to me, young lady! I will be at the monorail station should you choose to apologize, or even continue this revolution of yours. Agh, just as proud and arrogant as your father i tell you..." Walter muttered and stalked off with his arms folded around his enormous chest.

Her stormy grey eyes looked ahead bitterly at the man who had been judging her in combat since she was 5 years old. She ran her hand through her long dark blonde hair, and shook her head slowly, _clearly _annoyed.

Although he had acted like a father to her all her life, even after her real parents died, she still thought he was bloody annoying sometimes. 'I can't imagine any other man in Albion being more annoying than him. Even Logan wasn't this irritating!' she thought.

Ugh, she thought, why is it always me who has to apologize?

*o*O*o*

"You are forgiven." Walter's face, not as seemingly terrifying as the one he made on the hill, un-scrunched and made a pleasant appearance. She smiled, relieved that this was one of those times where he actually accepted any apology given by anybody.

They hugged happily, like any other family would do, until Walter decided to squeeze her very tightly, practically suffocating her. "Walter… you're… I'm-"she was released, and she collapsed on the floor, breathing heavily and clenching her chest. Walter grinned behind his massive beard and chuckled hard.

She got up, slightly annoyed at Walter's 'balverine' hugs but decided to shrug it off when a large, noisy, and bulky monorail car made its appearance and swayed closer to both of them. She sighed and blew the few strands of hair that had managed to fall from her neat bun. "I don't get it. A couple years ago, this dark, murky cave was nothing but a bottomless pit. Now people get dangled across it from miles around, from here to Bowerstone."

She stared down into the pit, wondering just how deep it was. She picked up a surprisingly heavy pebble and dropped it into the blackness. She listened carefully, and she never heard a sound.

Madison, suddenly realizing how afraid of heights she was, struggled to keep her knees from buckling. Walter seemed to see the alarm in her face, and patted her shoulder lightly and gave her a small fatherly smile. "It's alright, we are going to take a little detour first-"

He was cut off by an earsplitting explosion. Her head whipped around to see that the Monorail car had been blown off one of its hinges, and dangled dangerously above the void on one hinge. Her eyes widened, and silently cursed herself for somehow always bringing awful luck with her. Walter seemed to be praying to all deities that it would not fall.

With another piercing crack, its weight had become too much. The monorail car was plummeting down into the darkness and could be heard by its loud crash and the people screaming frantically for help, but diminished as the seconds went by.

"Come on! We have to get down there!" Walter's eyes were filled with worry, a characteristic rarely seen by anybody. He grabbed Madison's hand and gripped it tightly as they ran to the door that lead to the lifts going down to the bottom of the pit.

O*o*O*o*O

"Damn it all! The door is jammed!" Walter panted.

We had finally made it there even though it was a short distance away; people were screaming and running around hysterically. It took a bit to get around all the chaos.

Without a moment's notice, Walter had struck his large sword into the side of the door and wiggled it around frantically until the door flew open. "Come on!"

But Madison was way ahead of him, already at one of the lifts. Walter came sprinting to her, only to realize that the lift was small, frail-looking and could barely contain both of them, and a dog no less, at the same time.

"Its okay, Walter, pull yourself together, it's just a small lift, no harm is going to come to us... we are going to be just fine, yes.. Yes fine indeed." Walter murmured to himself. He had always been claustrophobic, and with us going to an unknown part of a dark cave, another one of his fears, made it even harder. She pulled the lever, and they descended down into the fog. Even her fearless dog Dustin seemed to be a bit shaken from all this.

In an attempt to make it easier for him, she decided to joke around a bit to get his mind off this situation.

"Walter, just how long is it before we reach Mourningwood? I mean, judging by how dreadfully aged you are, I doubt we will ever get there before Logan's goons find us first-" Walter took her by the hand and twisted it painfully before throwing her to the ground, his foot on her upper back. Quite painfully, I might add.

"Looks like I outrank you, Princess." He added. "Alright... Walter…" she sputtered. His foot was removed, and she started to wonder why she was always in out-of-breath situations.

"Alright then Walter, you can just be your overconfident, cocky self and maybe we can get to Mourningwood faster that way," she smirked. He seemed to totally forget about this place as he boasted about his physique and marksman skills for a while. Until we came to a crashing stop, at the bottom of the Monorail station, that is.

"Hey, it's actually quite lit down here," he stated. He was right, lanterns and torches were on every corner, and so no surprises were, hopefully, going to happen.

Walter seemed to take delight in the fact that it was so lit and things weren't going to jump out and scare them. He grinned, thinking he had been quite foolish, until he remembered the monorail car and its horrific details.

"Maddy, I believe we actually have a reason to be down here," Maddy had totally forgotten about it, and she and Walter sprinted worriedly towards the growing sounds of fire cackling, and decreasing sounds of screaming.

O*o*O*o*O

She ran as hard as she could, passing large stalagmites and what seemed an endless trail of skeletons and cockroaches, but stopped dead in her tracks when she heard a strange, yet frightening cackle from up ahead.

Walters's eyes went wide, and first reaction was to get his gun and sword ready. "Hobbes," he stated. "Plain, blasted Hobbes."

Hobbes? She thought Hobbes were just fairy-tales from her father's stories! 'No way. It couldn't be those things!' Just as she was about to question the likely-hood of the strange enemy being a Hobbe, she was interrupted when she caught sight of the bizarre, deformed monsters. The screaming had finally stopped.

Most of them were drumming on the damaged, almost unrecognizable monorail car or chewing on fresh bones, trying to clean any meat left on them. Their shadows danced around the walls of the cavern, making them seem even more menacing. They were short, plump and utterly revolting, she analyzed, but they looked like they could handle anything you could throw at them. They had gray skin, tiny yellow eyes, and a quite large mouth, with rows of jagged teeth. They also seemed to resemble children, in a way. Blood splashed around as one of them bathed in it, laughing wildly. Madison felt the blood starting to boil in her veins.

One of them took sight of the pair, and gave out an outlandish screech, which caught all of the creatures' attention. They had started zeroing in on them, baring hideous teeth and long, filthy fingernails looking for a new scratching post. Some of them used weapons also, like various bones and small pistols.

"Get ready, Maddy! It seems the Monorail accident wasn't an accident after all!" Walter exclaimed. "Wait, how the hell could these things make the car fall?" she questioned, getting into her battle stance, sword gripped tightly in her palm while her hand slid onto the handle of her pistol. But Walter's answer was drowned out by various war-cries from the creatures.

"Oh, this is going to be just_** fun**_." She scoffed.


End file.
